


Older But Never Wiser

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, oh no we have to sort out our issues because there's no way out, trapped in a shuttlecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-10 13:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15292425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: When the warp conference on Iraatan V sent an invitation to Jadzia in honour of Torias, she accepted. He’d never been able to merely attend a conference, though he’d wished it. Torias was the uncomfortable centre of attention at the conferences of his day.That was why she accepted. Because even though- Even though Torias’s life had been unreachable in the way she’d wanted, she could have this part of him. Of them.That was her first mistake.





	Older But Never Wiser

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lieutenant-selar](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lieutenant-selar).



> This is for lieutenant-selar on tumblr, through sapphicstartrek's femslash exchange! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it!
> 
> All plants, animals, and other things mentioned are from Star Trek canon because I get a kick out of that.

Torias had been the one to make a career in warp mechanics, but Dax didn’t lose the fascination. Curzon and Jadzia had kept half an eye on the advancements, wrapped in their cocoons of ambassador life and science.

Joining with new hosts meant becoming a new being, and that meant Dax was supposed to sever all ties with their previous life. But therein lay the loophole — _previous_ life. When enough time had passed, when old lives were weathered copper-green with time, they became easier to touch. To hold. To feel.

When the warp conference on Iraatan V sent an invitation to Jadzia in honour of Torias, she accepted. He’d never been able to merely attend a conference, though he’d wished it. Torias was the uncomfortable centre of attention at the conferences of his day. 

That was why she accepted. Because even though- Even though Torias’s life had been unreachable in the way she’d wanted, she could have this part of him. Of them.

That was her first mistake.

 

* * *

 

Her second mistake was taking the shuttle.

Benjamin left her in line behind a Lurian couple, chatting away fast enough the Universal Translator lagged in scattered consonants. People streamed by the boarding line, the shuttle expelling a metric ton of people onto the station. More still lingered inside. Deep Space Nine was one stop of many in this shuttle line — though Jadzia liked to think it was the most exciting stop. The frontier, as Julian had said.

Her bags stayed safe, tucked against her legs and zipped tight. On Jadzia’s first day at the Academy, her bag’s fasteners had split under the stress. Skill at packing luggage wasn’t one of the things she’d expected to gain from joining, but she appreciated it. That, and cleaning. Though not all of Dax's past hosts had enjoyed keeping their homes tidy, they all knew a dozen methods apeice to scrub out a misbehaving replicator or organize a closet.

By the time the shuttle disconnected from the station, Jadzia had crammed herself into an aisle seat next to a charming elderly Breen man and was rummaging through her carry on for her PADD. Though it was supposed to be for her work, Kira had loaded a pre-Occupation romance novel on for the trip. She hadn’t even had a second to look at the title until-

Until-

The sight of Lenara, beautiful and impossibly improbable, made Dax fumble the PADD. It bounced down the aisle, planting itself beneath the Lurian couple Jadzia had stood behind earlier.

Dax barely noticed. She could see Lenara only in profile, but it was her, clear as an Organian day. She was smiling down at the PADD in her lap, a quiet, private smile Dax had seen a thousand times before. Dax breathed out, her mouth dry, the sweet taste of Nilani’s syto beans blooming on her tongue. She ducked her head, her height a sudden misfortune.

Jadzia needed a moment to think. To clear her mind. But her mind, all those voices and thoughts and memories, only wanted to go down one road. _Benjamin had been right._

She shouldn’t have spent that time with Lenara. She shouldn’t have gotten to know her — _her_ , not Nilani, not Kahn. Jadzia shouldn’t have learned of her whip-quick wit and her brilliant mind. That only made it harder. That only made it worse.

A speaker squeaked, and Lenara looked up, almost at Jadzia but not quite. Her eyes were crinkled, her face lit up from whatever she’d been reading. Dax slumped deeper into the chair. Halfway garbled by the UT, the captain announced that any communication would have to wait until they reached the orbital station. A recent ion storm had taken the shipboard subspace offline.

Well, there went her plan of messaging her friends one by one until one gave in and distracted her. _QI’yaH._

So she sat, alone in her own mind as much as she ever was, and watched light and shadow dance on Lenara Kahn.

 

* * *

 

Dax had made it halfway to the orbital station’s check-in desk when she remembered the PADD. She’d been in such a rush to get off the shuttle and away from Lenara she’d forgotten about the book Kira had entrusted her with.

Almost as important, that PADD contained Dax's notes on warp field mechanics that she was going to be spending a seminar explaining.

“QI’yaH!” she spat, this time out loud.

 

* * *

 

Jadzia was buried half underneath a seat, her fingers brushing the edge of the PADD, when she heard footsteps. They clicked sharp against the shuttle’s floor plating, either hooves or a humanoid with heeled shoes.

“Excuse me,” a woman said, delicately. The awkwardness of the situation had occurred to her, but she had dismissed it. “Have you seen a green bag? The captain assured me they would store it in-“ 

Jadzia managed to get a hold of the PADD, and extracted herself from under the chair. At the same time, the woman fell silent. Though the voice had sounded vaguely familiar, Dax could hardly mistake the woman’s face.

It was Lenara. Of course it was.

“Lenara,” Jadzia said stiffly. The whir of the shuttle’s air recycler whirred deafeningly loud.

Instead of speaking right away, Lenara stared. Stared and stared, like she wanted to devour Jadzia with her eyes. Like she’d never seen her before. Like she was waking from a nightmare to find a dream. Her mouth hung open, like both air and words were beyond her.

Jadzia found her way to her feet and pasted a smile on her face. She didn’t want to know what expression had lingered on her face in the moment she’d come face-to-face with Torias Dax’s reason for sleeping at night — because of course, staying awake among his machines had always been the easy part. “Can’t say I’m overjoyed to see you again but I’m glad you’re-“

Lenara’s jaw slammed shut. She took a step forward, her fists curling at her sides. “You aren’t _overjoyed_? You talk like I’m the one at fault here!”

Jadzia flushed red as the shuttle's seating. “You made it clear where you stood!”

“I could have come back!” Lenara shouted. “I said I might-“

Jadzia shook her head. The lingering taste of home on her taste had soured. “No. You left. That was a clear message.”

“It wasn’t! You impossible creature." The words stung, a sweet name turned bitter. Lenara couldn't have hurt her worse if she tried. "I needed time to think-“

Dax scoffed. “To think? What about our situation needed thinking about? Either you _felt_  or you didn’t.” She looked down, breaking their matched burning gazes. “And you didn’t.”

“I did. I do.” Her voice broke. Lenara hesitated, then said, almost too soft to hear, “I always will.”

“You left,” Jadzia said. It was the only thing she could say. She could feel the cold of the railing against her again, the slightly off-kilter tug of the gravity generators on the upper level of the Promenade. In the here and now, the shuttle rumbled beneath her feet, nearly like a warning. She said again, “You left.”

Lenara scoffed, half hurt and half enraged. “What choice did I have? You wanted all or nothing, like you always do.” Kahn bit her lip, but the words spilled out anyway. "And maybe that was enough for Nilani, back when we made sense to the rest of universe, but it’s not enough for me.”

“Why can’t it be?" 

The ship lurched again, nearly tipping the both of them of their feet. Outside the window, the stars flickered into motion. But Dax didn’t care. That was her third and worst mistake — not trying to dive for her communicator before they got far enough from the station to lose contact.

But she didn’t. Because this — Lenara, Kahn, love, loss — was more important.

“Why can’t it be enough?” Kahn repeated, incredulous. "Because I’m older. Because we’re supposed to be wiser.”

“That was never part of the deal.” Jadzia steadied herself against another jolt on the back of a seat, the PADD still gripped in numb fingers. “More experienced, yes, but wiser? Never. That’s something you can’t just rely on getting.”

Lenara deflated. Her hands suspiciously steady, she tugged her fingers through her hair. “I know.” A short pause. “I know.”

They watched each other for a long moment. Jadzia knew she looked ever-so-slightly different — her hair had changed, the Starfleet uniform had changed. Lenara looked harder, somehow, her hair scraped back and shoulders set as sturdy as mountains.

Jadzia shook herself loose of her spinning thoughts and glanced out the window again. This time, the station above Iraatan V was barely in sight, indistinguishable from stars at this distance.

She swore again in familiar Klingon and made for the cockpit, Lenara behind her.

 

* * *

 

“Why didn’t it register us? I thought these kind of automated systems wouldn’t leave the docking area unless they’d cleared the shuttle of sentient lifeforms?”

Jadzia peered at the console, clicking away at the keys until the code log came up. Laughter bubbled up from around Dax, deep and distinct. “We did register. A little _too_ well.”

Lenara blinked at her, and then her hand went to cover Kahn in her stomach. “The symbionts.”

Jadzia nodded. “It’s an older system, from back when there were a lot of pest problems. It counts all life signs, and it’s from before we revealed the symbionts to the rest of the Federation. When it found four stacked life signs it decided the sensors were broken too.”

Lenara leaned against the co-pilot’s half of the console, her arms crossed. Dax watched with some curiosity — it wasn’t a pose Nilani had ever taken. She was more apt to hands on her hips. “And the comm system is down.”

The _so_ _we’re trapped together,_ went unspoken, which was just as well.

Dax nodded, her fingers flying. “Something got misaligned in the subspace amplifier and it sent a cascade through the secondary and tertiary systems. Without backup subsystem subroutines, the system can’t figure out how to transmit the message.”

Lenara made a thoughtful noise. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Jadzia bit her lip, distracted. “I think so. If I can get into the encoding database, I might be able to jury-rig some kind of override.”

Lenara raised an eyebrow as she leant over, starting her search of the co-pilot’s console. Her spots shifted, and Jadzia had to bury the sudden urge to taste them. “From what I know of Bolian systems, they don’t take well to overrides, and even less to hasty ones."

Jadzia scowled, even though Lenara, busy digging, couldn't see it. “When was the last time you worked on a subspace transceiver? Seventy years ago?”

“When was the last time _you_ worked on Bolian technology?” Lenara countered, brandishing a micro-laser. “They still have different systems than Federation standard, especially on ships as old as this one!”

 

* * *

 

“So when I say, disconnect that green wire and plug it into the third spot on the isolinear matrix.” Lenara blew her hair back from her face, disheveled and oil-stained from the adventure it had taken to take them into the guts of the shuttle’s communication system. “I’ll take care of the realignment with the gravitic caliper."

Dax nodded. She didn’t trust herself to be convincing if she said it out loud. If she reconnected the nadion emitters at the same time as Lenara powered up the phase couplings, that would be a much more effective way of resetting the system. It wouldn’t run the same risks of overheating as the hard reset did.

“Ready?”

Another nod.

Then everything went wrong. Jadzia _knew_ she’d initiated the right sequence, but instead of humming into a reset, it threw sparks. A second later, the entire system wailed and collapsed. It sounded like a small child’s tantrum, and was just about as unfixable.

“What happened?” Lenara demanded. She leant over, her hair dangling in a sheet, and saw the wires she had told Dax to move still in their original place. Her eyes narrowed. “ _Dax_. What did you do?"

Jadzia could smell her shampoo and perfume, Lida fruit and crystilia flowers. It was as different from her expression as possible. Jadzia loved her, her strange perfumes and furious faces and all. It was as sudden and inevitable a realization as the discovery of warp theory. “Sorry! I thought-“

Lenara sat back. shaking her head slightly. Some foreign emotion played across her face, whisper soft. “You didn’t, really.”

Jadzia winced. They’d be stuck out here until the shuttle reached the maintenance station now. “Sorry."

And then, wonder of wonders, Lenara started laughing. Holding her stomach, she listed against Jadzia’s shoulder and giggled, the sound bouncing off the shuttle's walls. She sounded sweet as arsenic. Jadzia buried her face in Lenara’s hair to hide her smile.

“Hundreds of years-“ Lenara gasped, between peals of laughter, “between us and we can’t fix a damn console.”

Jadzia felt something unravel in her, the hurt fading away. It left only pleasure in the weight of Lenara’s head on her shoulder, the warmth of her body against her own. 

Getting to this moment had been one disaster after enough, a chain of catastrophes. But this — soft lips and warm hands and her heart molten with happiness — this was no mistake at all.

 

* * *

 

“Um. Excuse me?”

Jadzia looked up at the repairman from her pile of seat cushions and Lenara. He looked flustered, his cheeks flushed azure blue. Lenara smiled against Jadzia’s neck, mouthing curses Kahn had spent decades collecting. “Yes?”

His attennae twitched. “Do you need… any help?” 

Lenara’s hand slipped into hers, squeezed. Jadzia smiled, the wicked kind that Dax loved. “You know, I think we just might be okay."

**Author's Note:**

> QI’yaH is a Klingon swear that's apparently one of the worst of the lot. Probably insert your favourite swearword there.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr or dreamwidth at writerproblem193! 
> 
> The dreamwidth version of this has excessive 'making of' notes, if that's your thing.


End file.
